Kush Maini lowers the pace in F2 testing with late lap

Photo: Virtuosi Racing

Virtuosi Racing’s Kush Maini topped the times in the second session of Formula 2 pre-season testing at Bahrain with a late lap.

Initially it was Prema’s Ollie Bearman who set the pace, with Van Amersfoort Racing’s Enzo Fittipaldi then moving ahead after six minutes with a 2m02.685s. ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins brought the pace down to 1m58.595s, and Bearman was the first to get a representative time on the board with a 1m47.959s.

His rookie team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli beat that moments later with a 1m47.745s, then Rodin Motorsport duo Zane Maloney and Ritomo Miyata slotted into first and fourth by setting a 1m46.672s and a 1m49.098s respectively.

Red flags waved moments later, halting the two-and-a-half hour session for eight minutes.

DAMS’ Jak Crawford jumped up to second place with a 1m47.022s once action resumed, with Martins then lowering the pace to 1m46.527s. A minute later Trident’s Richard Verschoor set a 1m46.479s, then MP Motorsport’s Dennis Hauger posted a 1m46.229s.

Maloney responded with a 1m46.092s, with DAMS’ Juan Manuel Correa, ART GP’s Zak O’Sulivan and Antonelli all lapping sub-1m47s to move into fifth, sixth and seventh places before red flags waved again.

The second stoppage lasted eight minutes, with greens waving again half an hour into the session.

After five minutes Martins became the first driver to lap in the 1m45s, while Hitech GP’s Amaury Cordeel became the 19th driver to set a flying lap. His team-mate Paul Aron was yet to even leave the pits, while Campos Racing’s drivers had done an outlap then spent a lengthy amoutn of time in the pits.

Fittipaldi bettered Martins with a 1m45.523s, and Hauger went third fastest with a 1m45.985. The order then went mostly unchanged until the start of the second hour, when Martins set a 1m45.073s to return to first place and a 1m45.537s put team-mate O’Sullivan into third. Aron finally left the pits five minutes later, but did not set a lap.

Bearman improved in sixth place 84 minutes into the session, but Antonelli beat him moments later. He was then shuffled down to eighth by Virtuosi’s Gabriel Bortoleto, and both he and Antonelli found even more pace in sixth and seventh but did not break the 1m46s barrier.

Going into the final hour Fittipaldi laid down a new 1m44.839s benchmark, and Crawford went fourth fastest but was over 0.8 seconds off the pace.

Campos’s Isack Hadjar finally set a flying lap with 38 minutes left on the clock, but did not reach a representative pace until 10 minutes later and went 12th fastest.

PHM Racing duo Joshua Duerksen and Taylor Barnard improved in 13th and 19th in the final half-hour, then with less than six minutes to go Maini jumped from ninth to first with a 1m44.219s. It put him on top by 0.62s over Fittipaldi, with Martins the only other driver within a second of him.

Hadjar jumped up to sixth in the final minute with a 1m45.902s lap, as his team-mate Pepe Marti sat in the pits having only done an outlap during the session.

Morning session results